The PLL and the Patriot League are kindred spirits, PLL Awards will have a weird year, and New York's season in the balance. PLL Week 4 Overreactions

The PLL and the Patriot League have a lot in common

During the college season, I believe that anyone who tells you they know what’s going to happen in the Patriot League is lying to you. It’s an unpredictable conference with results every week that seem completely out of touch logically with what had happened the week before. Results against common opponents mean nothing, trying to look at stats to predict an outcome is a fool’s errand. It’s best to just sit back and enjoy the mayhem. The 2026 PLL season is starting to look like the Patriot League. The Utah Archers had 20 total goals coming into Charlotte, the offense sputtering and struggling. They put up 15 against Blaze Riorden and the Chaos defense in a lopsided win. The defending champion New York Atlas lost their third game in a row, and now sit at the bottom of the PLL standings with a 1-3 record and -10 score differential. The Cannons have lost two straight games by the same 17-10 scoreline. The Waterdogs scored 13 total goals in their last two games, they had 13 goals midway through the 3rd quarter against Boston. Nobody, and I mean nobody, should be trying to tell you they’ve got a good feeling about how a PLL game is going to go right now.

Hofstra weekend will make or break the Atlas season

The New York Atlas, defending PLL champs, sit at 1-3 through four games and have the league’s worst score differential. It’s not a huge mystery why. Jeff Teat’s shoulder surgery will keep him out all summer, their top defender Gavin Adler left in free agency, they were missing Trevor Baptiste, Danny Logan, and other key players due to the schedule overlap. Losing arguably the top player in the league at four different positions, in a league where the margin between title contender and missing the playoffs is already razor thin, would turn wins into losses for anyone. But it’s now desperation time. There is a league bye this weekend, so the Atlas can get healthy and organized heading into Long Island weekend June 19-20. As the home team they have a double header, playing Boston on Friday night and then Maryland on Saturday. The Cannons are also 1-3 and have really struggled defensively. Maryland is 3-1, but had a bye in Charlotte and will be coming over a three week break. New York, at the very worst, has to split these games and make sure the win is decisive. They need to start chopping down that score differential deficit. The nightmare scenario is an 0-2 weekend. It further drops the differential and would take their record to 1-5. What’s more, they have a bye the following week in San Diego, then it’s the All Star break. If the Atlas go 0-2 on Long Island, they have to sit with their 1-5 record until their next game on July 10.

It’s going to be a weird year for PLL Awards

The expanded schedule might monkey wrench some things. After four games, some clear contenders for hardware have emerged. Joey Spallina’s seven point debut weekend firmly puts him in the conversation for Rookie of the Year. CJ Kirst had six goals against Boston over the weekend, is shooting north of 50%, has committed just one turnover, and looks the part of MVP and Attackman of the Year contender. Brett Dobson’s steady and elite play in net has kept Utah in games, he’s at 64% with a 48% clean save rate, and has just a 7.5 SAA. Trevor Baptiste is at 60% facing off, that’s even having had tough matchups with TD Ierlan and Luke Wierman. The thing is, all those guys have only played two games. Spallina’s college career was wrapping up during the PLL first two weekends. Kirst, Dobson, and Baptiste were all finishing up their indoor season (in the case of Kirst winning a title, and Dobson winning an MVP). It’s very early to be talking about awards. As we all love to say, there’s a lot of lacrosse left. But it’s not crazy to assume that each of those names will stay, at worst, in the conversation for their respective positional awards. Last year Owen Hiltz averaged nearly four points per game and was immediately Carolina’s top weapon. But he only played in seven games due to a late start from getting his visa sorted out, and didn’t win Rookie of the Year. Silas Richmond, Ty English, and Matt Collison still haven’t made their debuts as they wait for their visas, all of which could be instant impact players but at this point have missed four games (five for English) and have an uphill climb. Individual award campaigns usually aren’t much of a talking point; every player in the league would downplay their place in award races during the season if you asked them about it on record. But the voters will have to do some interesting comparisons between players who missed a chunk of the year and players who were available every week, particularly given that it’s not exactly the fault of the players who were gone that they weren’t able to be on a PLL field.

It’s time to show some restraint and stop forcing narratives

I have long held this gripe with the PLL. They love to try and drive stories and not just let things happen organically. It’s how you wind up with calling every matchup a rivalry. And winding up with stories with inaccuracies. An article on the PLL site about Kyle Lewis reads, “Lewis was one of the rare Division II players ever selected in the PLL College Draft, becoming just the second in league history (Max Adler, 2021).” Several parts of this aren’t true. Max Adler wasn’t taken in a PLL college draft, he was taken in an MLL draft in 2017. Connor Farrell played D2 lacrosse and was taken in 2019, he isn’t mentioned. Charlie Bertrand was a two time D2 Player of the Year at Merrimack and also isn’t mentioned, presumably because he was drafted after a grad season at UVA. His prolific D2 career shouldn’t be ignored. And if you go back through what the PLL loves to call Pro Lacrosse History, you’ll find north of 20 D2 players taken since the MLL draft started. All of this to say, it’s better to just be accurate, but I guess if you want to fudge it a bit to make the story that much more remarkable, that’s your prerogative. I think the players and the sport deserve better. We also had to have a Matt Rambo in New York narrative pushed hard on viewers. Rambo scored the Atlas first goal. He finished with 16 touches. He spent three quarters of the game having little to no impact. I realize he’s a former MVP, but I also realize there’s a CURRENT MVP on the Atlas. Why are we getting a story pushed on us about how a former MVP, who has spent the better part of the last two seasons a healthy scratch, might “provide a spark”?

Kyle Lewis is a remarkable player and a great story. Should his play stay at the level as it was his debut, he’ll be a superstar. But if the league has already decided KYLE LEWIS IS SUPERSTAR PUT HIM EVERYWHERE, and if it’s just rammed down throats constantly from now on, it gets ruined. Fans have to be allowed to latch onto these things and run with them. It doesn’t matter how badly the league wants a certain narrative to play a certain way. Or at least it shouldn’t matter. In pro sports, the best narratives are the ones driven by fans and players, organically. Sometimes they’re electric, loud, magnetic, and persist for weeks. Sometimes they never really catch on or burn out fast. No serious pro sports league should be pushing it one way or the other. We’ve seen this kind of thing mishandled before. Matt Gaudet made a splash in his debut, and ended up in a place where he didn’t want to wear a mic, didn’t want to be the focus of the pregame narratives, and didn’t want all the other nonsense that the league ended on forcing upon him anyway. Yes, he drew plenty of attention to himself, but the attention he drew was on his terms. What he wanted to be doing. That’s the difference. And if the league wants to be doing real pro sports, they have to stop trying to create and push the narratives they want, in the way they want, all by themselves. Because that’s not pro sports, that’s pro wrestling.